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South Korean Prime Minister Lee Nak-yeon meets with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo on Oct. 24. (Yonhap News)

South Korean Prime Minister Lee Nak-yeon and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reached an agreement in a meeting on Oct. 24 that bilateral relations cannot be left in their current strained state. While the two sides did not succeed in bridging their differences over a South Korean Supreme Court ruling ordering compensation for forced labor mobilization during the Japanese occupation of Korea, analysts said they potentially paved the way for restoring senior-level dialogue to reverse the spiral in their relations.

Lee met with Abe for 21 minutes at the Japanese Prime Minister’s residence in Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward on the morning of Oct. 24 while visiting Japan to attend its imperial enthronement. The originally scheduled meeting time was around 10 minutes, but the two ended up talking for longer, with Lee delivering a letter to Abe from South Korean President Moon Jae-in. After the meeting, First Vice Foreign Minister Cho Se-young explained, “With regard to South Korea-Japan relations, both prime ministers agreed that the two countries are important neighbors that cannot afford to leave relations in their current difficult state, and they also agreed that non-governmental interchange, including interchange among young people from both countries, is all the more important when the situation is difficult.”

Cho also said the two prime ministers “shared the position that South Korea-Japan and South Korea-US-Japan cooperation on North Korea-related issues is important.”

“Prime Minister Lee encouraged the promotion of different forms of communication and exchange, including dialogue among diplomatic authorities, and Prime Minister Abe said that diplomatic authorities should continue to communicate to resolve issues,” he added.

The Japanese Foreign Ministry similarly quoted Abe that day as telling Lee, “Japan and South Korea are important neighbors to each other, and connections between Japan and South Korea and among Japan, South Korea, and the US are exceedingly important, beginning with the North Korea issue.” Abe also “proposed continuing communication among diplomatic authorities to resolve issues [between South Korea and Japan],” the ministry said. Abe was further quoted as expressing thanks for Moon and Lee’s messages of commiseration over damages from Typhoon Hagibis.

Lee’s visit potential turning point, but forced labor issue still unresolved

But the two sides remained at odds over the matter of compensation for forced labor conscription during the Japanese occupation. Abe stressed that “promises between countries must be kept,” reiterating his position that the compensation issue was resolved with the Claims Settlement Agreement in 1965. In response, Lee said, “South Korea has respected and abided by the 1965 Treaty on Basic Relations and Claims Settlement Agreement as Japan has done, and it will continue to do so.”

“I believe South Korea and Japan can harness their wisdom to overcome the hurdles,” Lee said, stressing that the compensation issue is not resolved but an area in need of discussion. Because of the short duration of the meeting, the matter of compensation was reportedly not discussed in detail.

Instead, Lee shared Seoul’s commitment to resolving the strain on bilateral relations through dialogue with his delivery of a letter from South Korean President Moon during the meeting.

“The letter called for both sides to take an interest and work hard to ensure that issues between the two countries are resolved quickly,” a senior administration official said, adding that it “did not include any proposal for holding a summit at a specific time.”

The administration is viewing Lee’s Japan visit as a potential turning point in South Korea-Japan relations amid their relentless slide with the Supreme Court ruling on forced labor conscription in October 2018, Japan’s export control measures last July, and Seoul’s decision to terminate the two sides’ General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA) in August. After the meeting, Lee said, “We are now viewing all of the behind-the-scenes dialogue that has taken place intermittently between diplomatic authorities as having been formalized.”

“I am now looking forward to potentially speeding the process up,” he added. Meeting with reporters in Tokyo, a senior South Korean government official said, “Before, the pathway [communication channel] wasn’t really in place, but once a pathway is in place, we think that dialogue and discussions may be able to pick up some momentum.”

Experts advise separating historical issues from other areas of cooperation

Experts positively rated the meeting as laying the groundwork for improving relations, but predicted a lot of ground remains to be covered. Kim Sook-hyun, director of the external strategy research office at the Institute for National Security Strategy (INSS), said, “This was the first senior-level South Korea-Japan meeting in over a year since the Supreme Court ruling in October 2018, and it’s significant in providing gradual momentum for South Korea-Japan relations to cool off a bit and move toward a summit.”

“They reached an agreement on leaving historical issues to be addressed as historical issues and working together on areas such as trilateral cooperation with the US and North Korea issues,” she said.

With the Japanese government remaining adamant on the forced labor compensation issue fundamentally responsible for the conflict, some analysts are advising caution, predicting that a swift recovery of relations -- including a summit before the end of the year -- appears unlikely.

“Prime Minister Abe’s remarks stressing the importance of ‘honoring promises between countries’ show that he is clinging to the position that all Japanese compensation issues were resolved with the Claims Settlement Agreement, which confirms the difference in views between the two sides on the forced labor conscription issue,” said Yang Kee-ho, a professor at Sungkonghoe University. Yang also said the meeting “failed to live up to hopes of reaching a concrete agreement to hold a summit.”

Some major hurdles to clear for bilateral relations going forward include the official end of GSOMIA on Nov. 23 and the schedule for forced labor conscription survivors’ liquidation of assets seized from Japanese companies. If official dialogue does go well in the wake of the prime ministers’ meeting, the South Korean and Japanese leaders will have a number of remaining opportunities to meet within the year, including the ASEAN+3 (South Korea, China, and Japan) multilateral summit in Thailand from Oct. 31 to Nov. 4) and the APEC Summit in Chile from Nov. 16 to 17.

By Lee Wan and Park Min-hee, staff reporters, and Cho Ki-weon, Tokyo correspondent

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